A Heart Full of Love
by singingowl
Summary: After the June Rebellion, Marius and Cosette deal with the aftermath. One-shot.


Was I ever happy? I used to think I was. Maybe I still am. But for a time, I felt like I had fallen out of love. Marius seemed like a dream compared to my life before. I was a lonely child, a girl with only her father for company. But the first time I saw Marius I knew he loved me and I knew I loved him. But I did not know if I would ever see him again. He was a Barricade Boy and at the June Rebellion of 1832, most of them did not live to see the next day. But Marius lived, and he returned to me.

We married on a bright June morning. I was the happiest girl in the world. And he was the happiest guy. Our happiness did not last long though, because my adopted father soon died. Marius tried to comfort me, but he was too plagued by the ghosts of his dead friends.

He fell deeper into his depression. He gambled away all of our money. We had to live on a few francs a month. We moved from the grand mansion we used to own to a small apartment. I would cook dinner and place it in front of Marius, but he wouldn't touch it. He said that eating this food would betray his friends. After a couple weeks of him only eating bread and drinking water, I yelled at him for the first time:

"Your friends are dead Marius! You have to accept that and move on. I am not dead and you completely ignore me!" He only look at me with sad, pain-filled eyes. I took a deep breath and remembered my place in the household.

"I am sorry dear, I shouldn't have yelled."

"You know I love you, right?" There was a long pause. I thought I was hallucinating. He hadn't spoke to me for at least a week. He only sat in a chair and did not say anything. He only stared off into space.

"You spoke to me?" I asked him, incredulous. He nodded.

"I know dear. I know you love me," I said, putting my arm around him.

"I thought you didn't know." He said, staring at me with an emotion so unfamiliar I could not come up with a word for it. The closest word I can think has to be deep love. But that word cannot even compare to his stare. It was the first time he had looked at me like that in a long time.

I sat down near his chair,

"Do you remember the first time we met?" I asked him. "I was helping Papa give money and food to the poor and you were passing by. Our eyes met and I could not stop looking at you. I knew you loved me then." A smile slowly stretched across his face.

"I did love you then. And I still love you now," he said. I kissed him softly and then pulled away to finish making dinner. As I looked back at him, the lost look in his eyes had disappeared slightly. I smiled and continued to make dinner.

He slowly started to get better. When our baby girl was born, he looked truly joyful for the first time since our wedding. We named her Valerie Pontmercy. She laughed when Marius held her and he looked at her with love in his eyes. He looked at her in the same way I wanted him to look at me.

Some days he would revert back to his old self. He would sit on a chair, staring out the window. I knew not to disturb him. Once when I tried to get him to eat his dinner, he yelled at me:

"My friends are dead and I am alive! I should have died with them."

"If you died too, you wouldn't have married me. You wouldn't have Valerie."

"I don't deserve you or Valerie. My friends will never get to marry or have kids."

I didn't reply to him. I just turned around and left his dinner on the table. It went uneaten.

Years passed. Valerie was a toddler, just learning to walk. He had fewer and fewer episodes remembering his past. He spent every possible moment with me and Valerie. I finally felt like we were a family.

But one day, while all three of us were on a walk, I forgot to take the route that would take us away from the ABC cafe: the place where Marius and his friends would plan their revolution. Valerie was talking to me and Marius about the bird she saw yesterday when we came upon the street that the ABC cafe was on.

Marius stopped in his tracks. He looked around him, the sadness filling his eyes again. He wandered around the crowded street, remembering that dreadful day in 1832. He walked into the ABC cafe and sat in a table on the second floor. He looked around him.

"My friends sat here," he said half to himself and half to me. "They laughed here, they drank here. Here they planned the revolution that killed them. Oh god..." He trailed off, hitting his fists against the table. I carefully walked up to him and put my hands on his shoulders. He leaned back into my chest, big tears rolling down his face. I hugged him closer to me.

"I think it is best we leave," I said to him. He only nodded and got up out of his chair.

He never saw that room again; I made sure of it. Whenever we took a walk, I purposely had us take the walk on the other side of town. It took less time than before, but the haunted look finally left his eyes. He laughed with me and Valerie. He ran races with his daughter. He held Jean, his newborn son, in his arms.

One night, as I sat up in front of the fire with Jean sleeping in my arms, Marius walked up to me. I saw he had been sleeping for his hair was messed up and he dragged his feet as he walked, almost as if he would rather be in bed sleeping again.

"Cosette?" He asked.

"Yes Marius?"

"I had a dream. My friends were in it..." I sighed, thinking that I would have to endure the haunted look again.

"But they were not at the barricade I fought at. They were at a giant one in the middle of Paris. They laughed and smiled as they waved their flags. People came to the base of this giant barricade, wanting to take part in this rebellion. They were successful Cosette."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I cannot dwell on the past. They are probably in Heaven right now, on that barricade that I dreamed about."

If I wanted to see the horrible, sad look in his eyes, I would have told him that that was impossible. You cannot see into Heaven. But he was finally getting over his friends' deaths forever. I hope he would no longer look sad at any mention of our past lives. So I smiled broadly at him.

"I am so glad you dreamed that dream Marius." He smiled at me and sat down beside me, putting his arms around me and making me feel safe in his embrace.

If I learned anything from Marius, it would be that you cannot dwell in the past. If you do, you will become a ghost of yourself, never waking from the dreamland you are in. But if you realize that life goes on, you can learn to forgive and move on. You will live.


End file.
